Olfactive Studio: More than Meets the Eye

After 20 years as a fragrance-industry insider, Céline Verleure, also an avid fan of photography, decided to pursue a more avant-garde approach to perfume design—one that not only explores the relationship between scents and images but also opens up the insular world of perfume to a collaborative audience. "The idea was to create a new fragrance brand with the help of fans,” says Verleure, who is based in Paris. “It’s a very secret world, creating fragrances, and I thought it would be interesting to have people participate and react.”

Céline Verleure

In spring 2010, Verleure’s passion for perfume branched online when she launched a Facebook page in French called the “Blog for the fragrance that doesn’t (yet) exist!,” inviting her 500 followers, at the time, to vote on potential names, packaging, and the overall design for the developing fragrance line. In September 2011, inspired from the influx of original names and ideas that were submitted online, she launched Olfactive Studio—a hybrid photo-and-perfume-design project that has created a series of scents sparked from images. This spring, Olfactive’s five unisex eau de parfums—Autoportrait,Still Life, Chambre Noire(Dark Room),Lumiére Blanche (White Light), and the most recently conceived,Flash Back—make their U.S. debuts.

As for the unconventional creative process, after selecting a clever name—suggested by fans—Verleure searches far and wide (through word of mouth, Web sites, magazines, exhibitions, etc.) for a complementary image. Then, using her two-decade expertise in the fragrance field, she pairs the photographer with a perfumer, who translates the emotions evoked by the visual into a scent. “Depending on the mood of the fragrance, I choose a different perfumer,” Verleure says. As of now, she has connected some of the world’s most talented photographers (Luc Lapôtre, Clémence René-Bazin, Frédéric Lebain, Massimo Vitali,andLaurent Segretier)with a roster of renowned perfumers, including Nathalie Lorson, Dorothée Piot, Dora Arnaud, Sidonie Lancesseur,andOlivier Cresp.

Olfactive Studio's selection of scents.

Despite the brand’s out-of-the-box vision, the resulting quality and versatility of the highly concentrated scents are top-notch. “I think you can still be creative and have wearable fragrances,” says Verleure. While the striking images on the outside of each box could stand alone, the notes of each fragrance—from Still Life’s cocktail of Japanese yuzu,rare peppers, and dark rum to Flash Back’s tangy combination of rhubarb, grapefruit, and amber to Lumiére Blanche’s hot and cold hints of cinnamon, almond milk, and white musk—help bring every photograph to life, as a scent.

With a long list of names already generated by the brand’s online community, which has now grown to include more than 5,600 members and 20,000 fans, Verleure has plenty of inspiration for her next fragrance, which she plans to roll out in a year. For now, fans can savor this first round of scents as they arrive stateside (see below for listing).